Typically, in a business process outsourcing (BPO) scenario, a process execution may involve processing of large number of business documents (e.g., invoices, purchase orders, goods received notes, credit notes, checks, etc.). A business process may have one or more associated business documents, and two processes may share a business document. The business documents may be categorized into three types—input business documents (IBD), support business documents (SBD), and output business documents (OBD).
One or more of the input business documents may be needed to start a transaction. For example, an invoice is an input business document for an account payable (AP) process. One or more support business documents may be needed to complete later activities of the business process. For example, a purchase order (PO) may be necessary to validate the invoice. Output business documents may be generated after the completion of the business process.
Further, the input business documents may be characterized based on their business attributes and activities performed during their transactions. For example, in an accounts payable (AP) process for invoices, the business attributes may include business document type, vendor name, vendor address, invoice number, invoice date, purchase order number, invoice value, etc. Variations in the business documents may exist due to the differences in the business attributes. Further, the variations in the business documents may result in different sets of activities that need to be performed to process the transactions associated with the business documents. Further, these variations in the transactions may cause difficulties in tracking and managing the transactions, especially when the number of the transactions is large.
Another challenge faced in processing the business documents may be in allocation of resources for performing the activities associated with the transactions. Since the variations in the transactions calls for assigning activities to agents of different skill sets, allocating a work item associated with each transaction to an agent with required skill set (e.g., right work item to right agent) may become a challenging task in the BPO industry due to process variations and complexity.
Further, in the BPO industry, a customer may transfer a business responsibility to a BPO service provider. A contract may be formally created between the two parties and may include a negotiated agreement called a service level agreement (SLA). Common understandings about offered services of the BPO service provider, priorities, responsibilities, guarantees, and levels of service may be documented in the SLA. For example, the SLA may specify levels of availability, serviceability, performance, penalties, and other such attributes of service. Typically, specific SLA's may be negotiated up-front as part of outsourcing contract and may be utilized as a primary tool of outsourcing governance.
The BPO service provider, however, may have difficulty setting up, tracking, and managing the SLAs in case of complex processes which involve multiple forking and joining of transactions. Failure to comply with the SLAs may have adverse consequences. For example, financial penalties may be assessed for failure to adhere to the SLAs or the outsourced contract. Further, in case of multiple failures, the customer may terminate the outsourced contract.